SpaceDogDeveloper

Wait a sec. I just read that you’ve been using the (mysite.com/news/something-something) permalink structure for three years? If that is true, it is very strange.. don’t suppose you could send me your URL?

If your site has had those URLs for three years, don’t expect Google to update that anytime soon. Google is all about age and trust, and they’ll keep an old version of a URL in the index for quite awhile. I’ve seen Google hang on to old versions for literally half a year in some cases. As long as the pages redirect (if you click on the old version in the index and it goes to the new one), then you’re just fine. I strongly suggest you DON’T disallow these old urls as you can accidentally remove the new ones from the index.

When you’re using a 301 you are essentially telling Google “This page has been permanently moved to here”, much like forwarding your mail from your old apartment to your new apartment. And to use the post office example, disallowing would be like telling the post office “stop all mail to the address of my old apartment”, which would send that mail to the dead letter office.

Hopefully that made sense ??

The easiest way to fix this is to use an SEO plugin to edit your page titles (like All In One SEO Pack), and set the default to the way you want it.

To check a 301 redirect, you need to look at the header conversation of a browser. If you use Firefox, there’s a great plugin called Live HTTP Headers.

If you are redirecting a page to retain the PageRank, DON’T disallow it via robots.txt, as that will simply remove the pages from being spidered (which, I’m assuming is the reason for the redirect).

Also, if the ?page_id URLs are showing up in Webmaster tools under the “Restricted by Robots.txt” section, then your robots.txt is actually working. Keep in mind, robots.txt doesn’t mean that Google won’t spider those pages. It just means they won’t index them. The disallow: parameter is not a magic bullet to keep out spiders, its just a recommendation not to index them. If you really want to keep Google and other spiders away from a page, password protect the folder. That’s really the only way to do it.

Try adding/changing the “upload_max_filesize” integer. (see php.info).

Another thing to check for (depending on your host) is whether you’re using php5 and need to create a php5.ini file.

I didn’t look into your problem too deeply, but I did see this:

<ul class=”menu collapsible” id=”menu shoreditchfood”>

To the best of my knowledge, you can’t have multiple id’s on a page like you can for classes (you have another id=”menu” elsewhere on the page), and I’m pretty sure you can’t nest id’s either (so, no id=”id1 id2 id3″).

That might have something to do with your issues…

Although there isn’t quite enough information to properly determine what might have happened, if I were to venture a guess, the developer you hired likely edited some core WordPress files instead of making changes and custom functions through the theme files.

As a WordPress developer, I would never recommend editing core WP files as your odds of mucking something up during an update increase exponentially.

Do you have a link to the site in question?

Those links are usually generated by the wp_meta function in the sidebar.php file

`<?php wp_meta(); ?>

To change it, you’ll have to create a custom function by overriding it in your functions.php file, or you can just remove that call (which, in turn, will also remove the “Log In” & www.remarpro.com links).

Yes, DON’T use a Googlebot redirection! That’s very bad.. but, if you’re worried about your URLs, usually WordPress 301’s the old query string to the new permalinks. If that isn’t working for you, I highly recommend the Redirection Plugin for WordPress. Works like a charm for me.

But yeah, if you’re pages are already indexed, there’s not a huge value to renaming the URLs, as you will lose PR through a 301.

Personally, from an SEO standpoint, I’d be more worried about your URL structure /?p=123 than whether or not to noindex pages. Google can deal with duplicate content issues quite intelligently these days, especially when it comes to WordPress.

You’ll get a lot more leverage in search by changing your url structure to something more legible than query parameters than no-indexing pages. I tend to use a custom structure for blog posts /%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%.html but whatever works for you is best.

As for noindexing, Panther8 is correct, although I wouldn’t noindex error pages myself, because Google won’t index those anyway (unless they’re sending an incorrect response code, ie 200 instead of 404).

I’m a bit confused by your question. Are you hosting WordPress locally for development, or are you referring to uploading files to WordPress on your webserver through WP-Admin?

Uploading media files (pictures, videos, etc) to WordPress through the WP-Admin in a web browser requires the Flash Player browser plugin, which I’ve heard Apple isn’t shipping with new Macs. Go to the Adobe website and download the latest version of Flash Player. Or, you can use the “browser uploader” version alternate option.

If you are running WordPress locally, you’ll have to set the file permissions on your computer along with the localhost apache settings.

Hope that helps.

Hey Stingraynut,

Yup.. its the database.

When WordPress is installed at the root, the WP database is where the mysql_query is going to query, not the ZenCart DB. So, even if you did fix the parse error, you’ll end up getting an awesome “Warning: mysql_fetch_assoc(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in […]/wp-content/plugins/zen-cart.php on line 49” error.

These definitions:

define(‘DIR_WS_CATALOG’, ‘/~lsenft/zencart/’);
define(‘HTTP_SERVER’, ‘https://localhost’);

are really only used for the code:

echo ‘<li class=”zen_cat_item zen-cat-item-’ . $subitem_count . ‘”>’ . $subcats_row[‘categories_name’] . ‘’;

Basically, that is for the “while” statement that outputs the proper link URL in the sidebar. So, it should be set based on your configuration:

define(‘DIR_WS_CATALOG’, ‘/YOUR-ZENCART-FOLDER/’);
define(‘HTTP_SERVER’, ‘https://YOURWEBSITE.COM’);

(as for the “parse error”, I didn’t get one.. maybe check to see if its a semicolon and not a colon on line 13?)

The real meat lies here:

define(‘TABLE_CATEGORIES’, ‘categories’);
define(‘TABLE_CATEGORIES_DESCRIPTION’, ‘categories_description’);

These are the actual tables in the ZenCart database. I changed the name from ‘zen_categories’ to ‘categories’ because that’s how the tables are laid out in my particular installation, can’t be sure about yours, you’ll have to look in your ZenCart DB.

Sooo… I added a mysql_connect function to call the ZenCart DB, and it works.. not perfectly, mind you, but enough for me to build off this code (I’ll keep you in the loop on that ?? ).

mysql_connect($hostname,$username, $password) OR DIE (‘Unable to connect to database! Please try again later.’);
mysql_select_db($dbname);

*$hostname is your database host URL (depending on your server configuration, localhost may work)
*$username is the DB username
*$password is the password

Unfortunately, this is NOT secure in the slightest, as you’re dropping your ZenCart DB login info into a flat file (scary!), but it does query the right DB and it did put a list of my products in the sidebar from the widget (yay!).

What I might do is build an admin for this plugin that lets you enter the ZenCart DB info into the WordPress DB and then call it from there, but that’ll take me a bit of time (I’m not the world’s greatest php developer ?? ).

I’m using a ZenCart theme that pulls WordPress functions (headers, footers, CSS) directly into ZenCart which I found the (genius) code for here:

https://michaelwender.com/2010/10/28/integrating-wordpress-and-zencart/

Not sure if that’s what you’re attempting to do also, but I gotta plug that code!

Looks like you’re using the code from https://www.forgeniuses.com/2009/11/19/wordpress-plugin-sidebar-widget-for-displaying-zen-cart-categories/

I tried this code as well, but I think the problem is that he has his ZenCart installation on the root of the server and his wordpress blog at a subdirectory, which I think is the opposite of what you’re going for.

It appears that plugin is querying the WP database, and not the ZenCart one (I could be completely wrong about that though).

I’m currently looking for a similar solution to display ZenCart products on a WP homepage (WordPress installed on root, ZenCart on subfolder). If you find anything, please let me know.. I will do the same ??